Wednesday, September 4, 2013

We want to start off by saying we are not reflexively opposed to military intervention in Syria. Assad is a bad dude and anything we can do to reduce the planet's population of bad dudes, we are generally in favor of.

The trick however with Syria is the people who want to topple Assad contain among them also bad dudes... very, very bad dudes of the Islamist variety. Perhaps you have heard of them. While there are certainly secular liberals in the rebel ranks, their saner, rational approach to things gets rather overwhelmed in, literally, the heat of battle. Blood-thirsty jihadists tend to have that effect on people.

We appear, then, not to have learned anything from our involvement in either Libya and Egypt that are in varying degrees of chaos at the moment precisely because the "good guys" of the rebel movement didn't have the juice to influence things to more peaceful and democratic ends.

Now, as recently as this past Friday evening, the President was prepared to go it alone and by alone we mean with France. Word around the campfire has it that the President had a change of heart after British Parliament's stinging rebuke to PM David Cameron's support of the war on Thursday ending any hope of help in this endeavor from our closest ally.

Obama informed congressional leaders late Friday/early Saturday that he would seek Congressional approval before doing anything in Syria. And unlike delays he applies to laws that he himself wanted to see passed, he and the Veep promptly hit the links.